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What does the assisted dying vote say about our changing society?
The majority of the British public support giving the terminally ill the right to end their lives
MPs have voted in favour of assisted dying by 330 to 275, in a landmark moment in Parliament, reflecting a profound shift in the issue in England and Wales.
MPs debated – which would give people in England and Wales in certain circumstances the right to choose to end their own life .
The historic vote came "after five hours of passionate debate during which MPs shared personal stories", while those against Labour MP Kim Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill "called for better end-of-life care", said BBC News.
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Westminster debates over assisted dying have been protracted and thorny; a similar bill was decisively rejected by MPs in 2015. But recent YouGov polling has shown "strong, bipartisan" support among the British public for legalising assisted dying for the terminally ill.
It found that 73% of Britons believe, in principle, that assisted dying should be legal in the UK, while only 13% say it should not. And attitudes to Leadbeater's proposed law are identical: 73% of the public support it, while 13% are opposed.
What did the commentators say?
This was a day "like few others at Westminster", said the BBC's political editor Chris Mason. It was a vote on an issue of "profound social change" as well as "an issue of conscience". Being a free vote, many MPs – over half of whom were elected to Parliament for the first time in July – will have felt "shorn of their usual political compass bearings" when it came to this bill, instead coming "to a very personal decision" on the matter of assisted dying.
But despite the bill passing its second reading, this is simply "the beginning of the arguments rather than the end of them" and it will remain "one of the biggest talking points at Westminster of 2025, with further debates and votes to come".
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The debate around assisted dying has been particularly fraught, said Lewis Goodall on the i news site. One whispered theory behind this is "the gulf in religiosity between public and those in public life" – MPs tend to be "more observant of religion than the population at large". While this is perhaps unsurprising – "the devout are often motivated by our better instincts" – it has led to "a mismatch between public and Parliament on some of the fundamentals of how life is conceptualised". Two-thirds of the public support assisted dying, "much more than is reflected in the chamber".
Yet despite the vote, the decision around assisted dying is far from being "set in stone", said Emma Duncan in The Times. In Britain, there have been three big societal changes in the recent past: the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the legalisation of abortion and the protection of trans rights. They show that "liberalisation is not necessarily a one-way street". While gay rights have been increasingly liberalised, abortion laws have on the whole stayed the same for half a century, and we have rowed back on trans rights.
In each of these areas "it is society's experience of how a change in the law has played out that has shaped the subsequent story", said Duncan. "When people perceive that liberalisation has benefited some and harmed nobody, we've gone further. When a change seems to have achieved a reasonable balance of rights, then we stick with it. And when the rights of one group seem to be endangering another's, then we row back."
These stories should "reassure nervous MPs". Changing the law "does not lead inexorably to a dystopian end that we never wished for," said Duncan. "Once we have lived with assisted dying, we will know whether we want to stick with it, extend it or reverse it. It will be up to us."
What next?
This vote is just the first step in a long process: there are still many months of parliamentary debate ahead before the bill has a chance of becoming law. The bill will not return to the Commons until next April.
MPs could vote twice more on the bill, including any amendments and at a third reading, after which it will go to the House of Lords.
Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.
